Eye of a Cannon
by The Laugh Master
Summary: After the events of the 50th anniversary episode are all said and done, Clara thinks she'll relax by making a nice souffle. Little does she know the Doctor's overlooked an important detail about the goings-on in the Black Archives that'll warrant a second visit...
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: None of the characters, places or names are mine. This is made just for fun!

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"Souffle?" Clara asked, coming down the steps into the console room, steadying the lemon soufflé she was carrying in her oven-mitted hands.

"Hm?" the Doctor called, taking his feet off the console and looking up from his copy of _Astral Geophysics for Dummies_.

"I made… a soufflé." Clara gingerly set down the casserole dish and took a seat beside him.

"Ah, yes," the Doctor said, sticking a finger in the edge of the foam and licking it, "Soufflé. Mm. Lovely." He shifted in his seat, contemplating his sticky fingers. "You know, Earth is the only planet that bothers with soufflés."

"What do you mean, we _bother_ with them?" Clara laughed.

"Humans, you got all sorts of flavors of soufflé," he said, "Chocolate, carrot, strawberry, _cheese_…" He trailed off. "See, the rest of the galaxy all tried some sort of whipped-egg, baked-custard thing, but they all chucked it out after a couple accidental pots of sunken goo."

"Ah, well," Clara said, shaking her head, "They're just not persistent enough, then."

"Either that, or…" The Doctor trailed off, shooting Clara a sideways glance.

"Or what?"

"Or the rest of the universe just has better things to do."

"Hmph! Rude," Clara scoffed, crossing her arms. "Well, if it's that unimportant…" She scooted the soufflé dish away from the Doctor.

He grinned. "Ah, now, I didn't say that." He sat up quickly and took a spoon from the tray. Clara smiled and took one as well. Then something about the way Clara turned jogged the Doctor's memory and he put his spoon down heavily, looking confused.

"No wait, hang on, you were in a picture."

"What?" Clara asked.

"You. In a picture, on the wall. I saw you." The Doctor frowned, gesturing vaguely and visualizing a bulletin board.

"Sorry, bit lost. We still talking about soufflés?"

"No… the Black Archives. You remember, the Zygons, the broken memory wipe thingies, the ooh-hey-let's-blow-up-London-because- y'know _who's ever heard of diplomacy?_" The Doctor stood up, annoyed, and went to the console to start powering it up.

"You mean U.N.I.T?" she asked, standing up as well and peering curiously at the Doctor. "Wait, okay, they have a picture of me. So what?"

"_Clara_," he said, pausing his button-pushing and switch-flicking to look at her seriously, "If that was the first time you've been to the Black Archives, how was there already a picture of you being there on the wall?" He resumed dashing about the console.

"Ooh," Clara said, tapping her head to remember, "There was something about that. That women said so."

"Kate Lethbridge Stewart?"

"Yeah, she said she was… screening your associates? Didn't want information about you falling into the wrong hands."

The Doctor sighed exasperatedly. "Knew they'd try something like that," he said in a low voice, "Just never thought they'd dare go so far." He looked up. "Flip that lever."

"What?"

"Lever," he said, snapping and pointing, "Flip it."

"O-kay…" Clara flipped the designated lever. The TARDIS parked with a satisfying echo-y thud. She glanced at the ceiling cautiously. "What'd I just do?"

"Landed us." He picked up the phone from the console and pressed a button. "Black archives, I know you're listening!" the Doctor scolded, and the attendant on the line swallowed nervously.

"Something we can help you with, sir?"

"Yeah, _stand back._"

"Wha-?"

He hung up the phone with a click.

"Landed us where?" Clara asked. When the Doctor appeared to not hear her, she repeated, "Doctor, landed us _where?_"

"1760, Pirate ship. About to dock in…" he checked his watch, "Port Au Prince."

"A pirate ship?" she asked incredulously, wondering if the Doctor had lost it.

"Yes, pirate ship, Jolly Roger, stolen treasure, yo-ho-ho and all that? Ring a bell?" the Doctor said grumpily as he pulled a slightly smushed pirate hat from under the console and plopped it on Clara's head. He strode towards the door and swung it open with more force than strictly necessary.

"But what are we going there for?" she asked, chasing after him.

He glanced back at her over his shoulder, looking cross. "Shopping."

And with that he walked out and Clara followed him, utterly bemused.

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A/N: Well, that's part one, hope you liked it. Stick around, because two more chapters are on their way. I didn't have a beta, so I know there's a few rough patches in here, all mistakes are mine. Let me know what you think! Thanks.


	2. On Board With The Idea

Disclaimer: Again, characters and the TARDIS not mine :(

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Clara stepped out of the TARDIS to the sound of gulls and a cool sea mist. She steadied herself as the ground swayed slightly; the wood floor groaning and the waves crashing against the side of the boat many decks below. She looked around in amazement. They had done it, they had actually gone and landed on a pirate ship. The TARDIS looked incongruous among the billowing sails and row of cannons.

The Doctor was inspecting the last cannon in this row carefully, sticking his head into the mouth of it and coming out again coughing and ash-colored with gunpowder. Clara marched up to him.

"There you are," he greeted cheerfully, clapping his hands in a cloud of dusty gunpowder, "What do you think? Is this a good one?"

"What are you doing?" Clara asked.

"Told you. Shopping."

Clara raised an eyebrow. "For a…cannon?"

"Yes, and I've picked this one." The Doctor glanced nervously over his shoulder at the distant sound of boisterous hearty laughter. This part of the deck was empty, but he highly doubted the whole ship was.

Clara put her hands on her hips and smirked. "Looks more like stealing a cannon to me."

"Yes, well, it's a pirate ship. I thought it was appropriate." The Doctor bent down and picked up the rope tug that was attached to the wheeled cannon and started to pull.

It was then that the madness of the situation caught up with Clara again.

"But hang on, this is ridiculous. You can't just take a cannon, out in the open, off the deck of a pirate ship!"

The cannon budged forward slowly on its wheels.

"Why not?"

"From right under their noses, somebody's gonna notice! Nobody could manage that." Clara insisted.

"We can, if we're quick." The Doctor groaned, struggling with the cast-iron weight. "Push, will you?"

Clara sighed and pushed the opposite end of the cannon.

"In broad daylight?" she questioned, not quite ready to give up yet.

"Much easier to see what we're doing." He replied. Clara shook her head.

They wheeled it aboard the TARDIS. Now the weapon was the one looking out of place, awash in the electric blue and green lights of the console.

"What I still don't get is why you need a cannon," Clara said, leaning against it and folding her arms.

The Doctor dashed to the console, frantically resetting the coordinates and sending them off into the vortex. "I need to have a chat with UNIT about the Black Archives."

"A chat with a cannon?" Clara was surprised. "Not your usual style, then," she muttered. The Doctor pretended not to hear her. He walked back over to her as they flew.

"Thing is, Doctor," she continued, "The Black Archives, they said it was TARDIS proof. How are you gonna get in?"

"TARDIS proof?" he scoffed, giving her a manic grin and straightening the cannon, "Ha!"

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A/N: ...And when I said this would be out soon, I meant _soon_. This chapter was a short one, but part 3 will be significantly longer. Free internet points for everyone who tells me what they think of it. :)


	3. Irresistibly Curious

Disclaimer: None of this is mine

Ch 3

Kate Lethbridge Stewart was bored. She had been about to head home after a completely uneventful day when the sensors had picked up a blip of activity outside the entrance to the Black Archives. She figured the sensors were on the fritz again; there was no way anyone could get down there past the security guard, after all. But she thought she'd better check it out anyway.

She was just down the hall from the main entrance when she paused, hearing a strange noise.

There it was again!

The squeak of wheels, pulling something heavy.

A voice called out, "And 3…2…1…!"

A deep, thunderous boom roared out from in front of her. It shook the earth, knocking her (and many valuable alien artifacts) to the floor as it filled the hall with smoke.

She pulled herself up, coughing. As the smoke began to clear, she saw the front door had been reduced to ashes. Through it was a big, antique-looking cannon, framed by the great blue box, that Kate knew better than she was supposed to and less than she wanted to.

The very man from whom the Black Archives was hidden poked his head in the smoking crater that used to be the front door.

"Do you _think_," he said crossly, "that you're my _mother_?!"

Kate Lethbridge Stewart, for one, was speechless.

"I'm sorry?" she asked, grappling for composure and dignity like a drowning man grabs a slippery flotation device.

The Doctor climbed through the hole, with Clara following, somewhat sheepishly, behind him.

"Kate Lethbridge Stewart" he reprimanded, striding past her to where a bulletin board was, filled with pinned up pictures and notes and connecting strings, "You've been kidnapping my companions!"

Kate sighed. "Oh, alright. We were going behind your back, but it was for your own safety, so there's really no need to be so dramatic."

"Dramatic? You're the one being dramatic, thinking that all my friends can't be trusted."

Clara watched as the Doctor began to rip pictures of his past companions off the board. She felt a vague sense of déjà vu, seeing a picture of herself up there.

"They _can't_ be. At least, we had to check if they were." Kate insisted, knowing full well she was fighting a losing battle.

"And again, do you think you're my mother?" The Doctor spread his hands. "I'm twelve hundred and two. _I can make my own friends._"

He plucked the last picture up and turned to face her with the full intensity of his Oncoming Storm stare.

"Okay, how's this : I've given the TARDIS a scan of your mind-wipe things. Anyone comes on my ship that's been wiped by you, I'll know about it. So this stops, now. Do you hear me?"

She looked at the smoking remnants of the entryway and sighed. "Loud and clear."

Then she looked back to meet the Doctor's gaze and realized she had pegged the situation all wrong.

He wasn't threatening her at all.

He was forgiving her.

For all his bravado with the cannon, she recognized the generosity in this gesture. There were plenty of things in the collection here that she shouldn't have, according to the Doctor, and here he was, ignoring them. She knew he was wary of humans having access to such technology ahead of schedule, interefering with timelines, possibly damaging the course of history, and probably breaking a few intergalactic laws as well. But she also reckoned one irresistibly curious scientist would be hard pressed to deny another.

The Doctor gave her a questioning glance, and she nodded, understanding the bargain he was offering. She would do as he asked, and he would trust her not to abuse the privilege of the alien artifacts in her care. Kate Lethbridge Stewart didn't know if he was doing it out of respect for her father or trust in her, but she knew a gift when it was being given to her.

He smirked, then cleared his throat and said loudly, "I'm just going to have a look around, make sure you don't have any more of these files hidden away somewhere."

"Sure," she said, knowing full well she just wanted to have a proper look around the collection.

The Doctor walked up and down the rows of tables and shelves, picking up alien tools at random and explaining what they were, or laughing when they had something mislabeled.

"Silurian energy converter? As if! The Silurians would be _embarrassed _by this workmanship! It's a Sontaran storage capsule, and it goes the other way up."

Clara sidled up to Kate Lethbridge Stewart and spoke in a low voice. "So he's not _actually _gonna blow you all sky high, then?"

"No. That would be…hypocritical, at best." Kate replied.

"Ooh, a hydrogen replicator. Been a while since I've seen one of these beauties. These things are only native way on the other side of the galaxy."

Kate smiled. "Even if he did want to shut us down, a cannon isn't his style."

Clara laughed. "Yeah, that's what I said, totally ruins the bow tie and suspenders look. Give him an eyepatch and a parrot and I still don't think he'd have enough pirate in him to pull it off."

"All the same, I'm going to have to stop our operation of interfering with his companions. He did send quite a clear message. But for the record, no one he traveled with ever did fail our security checks. You should know that."

"You lot, you have this labeled as an Intergalactic Class V Hardrive. Those can split helium atoms, transcript the electrons with unimaginable amounts of data, then puts those particles in a time loop so it can transcript even more data on the same electrons at different points in its time stream. One of the most magnificently complex pieces of machinery in the history of creation. But do you know what this really is?" The Doctor pushed a button on the side of the object, a spring and several bolts popped out of the slot on top. "A _toaster._ A _broken. Judoon. Toaster._"

Kate Lethbridge Stewart smirked. "He may have an ego the size of his spaceship and some deeply flawed ideas about what's best for him, but you should listen to him when he tells you one thing."

"What's that?" Clara asked.

Kate Lethbridge Stewart turned to look at her. "He does only take the best people."

Clara looked at her curiously. Seconds later, the Doctor popped up behind them. "Kate Lethbridge Stewart, I can at least provide a bit of friendly advice before I go on my way, would you like to see what you got wrong? And Clara, you really should check out the collection, not bad for 21st century. Go on, off you go." The Doctor prattled on, shepherding them into the halls of the archives.

After that, Clara had an enjoyable time touring the archives, learning about what they had collected from Kate, along with the occasional correction or sarcastic comment from the Doctor.

Just before they left, the Doctor slipped away and went off on his own, while Clara and Kate Lethbridge Stewart were busy inspecting a Retrograde Voon Sanitation Deployer. But Clara watched him through the gaps in the shelves. He picked up the pictures of his companions that he'd torn off the wall and slipped them into his jacket pocket, when he thought no one was looking.

A/N: Well, that wraps it all up. Hope you enjoyed it, and if you let me know what you think, I might just have my next fic up really soon :) Thanks for reading!


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